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Buffalo NY Organizes for Peace and Nonviolence

Posted by Ryan Hall

10.16.15

By Tom Casey

This year during the Campaign Nonviolence Week of Actions in Buffalo, NY, in order to expand from 2014 events, locals organized a Campaign Nonviolence planning group called the Western New York (WNY) Coalition of Peace & Nonviolence Advocates.

Two events were held, a Peace & Nonviolence Festival on Labor Day (an already scheduled event day for Buffalo’s Stop the Nonviolence Coalition) and an Interfaith-Intercultural Celebration on September 21st. There were over 80 co-sponsoring organizations, all of which work to reduce violence in some way, each of which promoted the events through their member contact lists. The Festival included the Peace Walk, entertainment and children’s activities including The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers blue sky scarves. The Interfaith/Intercultural Assembly focused on youth from various faiths, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds presenting their ideas for Peace and Nonviolence.

The mission was to shine a light on the organizations and churches working in so many diverse ways to make our community and world less violent and safer for our children. The participants were called to emulate the nonviolent lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sister Karen Klimczak (Buffalo’s Apostle of Nonviolence who John Dear thinks should be a saint and who originated the PeacePrints signs a picture of which is below). The organizers believe every person, group and religion can embrace and mainstream nonviolence in order to move humanity to a more just and compassionate world.

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